Description:
Actor G.D. Spradlin talks about his life growing up in Oklahoma and his career in Hollywood working with people like Marlon Brando and Francis Ford Coppola.
Transcript:
Interviewer: Clyde Martin and an unknown male and female speaker
Interviewee: G.D. Spradlin
Interview Date: 4/6/2007
Interview Location: Spradlin’s home
Transcription Date: Tuesday, June 9, 2020
File Name: G.D. Spradlin 4-16-07.wav
Clyde Martin: This is Clyde Martin and I am in the home of G.D. Spradlin, whom many of you have seen in movies and on the stage, and is a dear, longtime friend of mine. [metallic clink] G.D., let’s talk, shall we? [laughs]
G.D. Spradlin: What shall we talk about, Clyde?
CM: Let’s start in the beginning.
GDS: In the beginning?
CM: Yes, in the beginning.
GDS: Well, in the beginning, God created Heaven and Earth.
CM: [laughs] No.
GDS: You want to go later than that?
CM: Yes, a little later. All right, let’s start with where you were born and when and go from there.
GDS: I was born in 1920 in Daylight Township. This is not a township. This is for tax purposes only now. At one time we had a store and a school building. It has neither now. It’s about halfway between Pauls Valley and Wynnewood. (unintelligible) And that’s there I was born. Where I came from was a father who was born in Arkansas, and a mother who was born in Indian Territory in what’s now Chickasaw Nation. The first Spradlin came from London on the ship Sistommen Jean to what is now Virginia. Get this now, this date. The first Spradlin, his name was Robert. He came to Virginia in 1635.
CM: Good heavens.
GDS: That is an old name. [laughs] We’ve all been farmers, tenant farmers for the most part.
CM: You grew up there?
GDS: Yes.
CM: You went to school I presume, nearby? Did you walk to school? How did you go to school and where?
GDS: Grade school was in Liberty, which is a totally rural school. Nothing there but the schoolhouse, which serves as the church house on Sundays. When I was quite small, I would ride with my mother and father in a buggy. I got a bit older and I would walk then with classmates who lived in a rougher neighborhood. I’d walk back and forth in sunshine or in shadow. My father was a principal at that school. It was a three-room, three-teacher school. My mother taught the first two or three grades. My aunt taught fourth and fifth, and then my father taught sixth, seventh, and eighth in a separate building on the same grounds. That’s where I went to school for those grades. No, I mean the first two grades. I went into fifth twice, and sixth the Elmore City, Oklahoma. My father got a job as superintendent of schools there. Seventh and eighth I in Wynnewood because he then got a job as superintendent in Wynnewood School in seventh and eighth there. In eighth grade I started riding a horse to school in Wynnewood, but then we had to leave. My dad thought he was going to have a job right away, but he didn’t. He had heard from good friends that said they controlled the school in Hatch, New Mexico. If he could come out there and go to work, he could go to work as superintendent of the school there. That’s where we went. [laughs] We got there and they didn’t control the school. My father didn’t have a job there. This was the height of the Depression. So we picked tomatoes, the three of us. My little sister was too small. We picked tomatoes, and when they ran out we picked cotton to have a little cash. Then Dad got a job at the CCC, which was an FDR project going in those days. The Civilian Conservation Corps, someplace up in Colorado. The three of us – my mother, my little sister, and I – went back to the farm and then I started high school in Pauls Valley. After one semester in New Mexico, I started there and that’s where I graduated. Then OU. The first year I was there I had a job with the ROTC, which was [laughs] still a horse-drawn artillery. I mucked out the stables for a while, and then I had a job cleaning and oiling the tack. Easiest job I ever had in my life. The pay was not as high, though. It was 25 cents an hour, only in school time. During the summer months, I had to make some money so I had to work as a field hand. I worked with a harvest crew, harvesting wheat. They were being bundled in those days. They wouldn’t have a combine that goes up and down the row. (Unintelligible) and then we’d start it up and then we’d shock it with some shocks. (Unintelligible) and my job with a pitchfork was get one of those stalks and throw it up on the grain wagon to a man who was arranging the stalks up there. I’m just a kid. I got 10 cents an hour, but that was a man’s pay in those days, and I did a man’s work. Hardest work I’ve ever done. The wheat field was also the hottest I’ve ever done. There was part of a time I was baling alfalfa, taking the bales up to the barn and stacking in the barn under a hot tin roof under August sun in Oklahoma. And you’re quite warm. You don’t need heavy underwear doing that job. I think I’m rattling too long. I’ve also worked as a field hand chopping cotton. Cotton is sowed much thicker than you need. You never know what seeds are coming up. You’ll have a lot of cotton in a row but you don’t want the stalk coming up. You want just about a width of a hoe between stalks and you go along chopping that. You chop the weeds out around it, too. Johnston grass is awfully heavy down there, especially on that new bottom. [unintelligible] up on the hill. Let’s see. What else? Chopping cotton. Corn, you done that with a team. We had one balky mare named Maud and borrowed from an uncle an old, gray mule named Tom. That was my team. You’d pull whatever mowing machine and you were cutting alfalfa, or a cultivator, whatever. That’s what the team did. That was the power you used. Tom was pretty good. He wouldn’t balk on you because he had a tendency to run away when he was disturbed. Maud ‘s problem wasn’t running away but she’d get dragged along by Tom. Are you kids interested in this story, what it was like in the Depression? [laughs]
Unknown female speaker: Listen, this is not just for us. This is for your grandchildren too. This is a legacy for your grandchildren as well. So yes. This is a time we’ll never see.
CM: That’s right. I’m younger than you, so I don’t remember much of the ‘30s. I just don’t remember very much then. But you do.
Unknown female speaker: Exactly. This is exactly what we want to hear.
GDS: I am a child of the Great Depression. I worked young. I always worked. During school, I would milk cows ten times in the morning and ten times at night.
CM: Good heavens. When would you do your homework? [laughs]
GDS: [laughs] Oh, I never did any homework.
CM: With your parents being teachers?
GDS: [laughs] My father was so disappointed in me. He was a whiz at math, and he loved math. He loved the music of math. Multiplication tables – I could never get them right where I could just spit them out. My father was just a whiz, and, in those days, they had contests for math students. You’d go up to Oklahoma City and you’d enter a contest. They had a whole string of numbers and whoever could add them up in his head. My God, I didn’t even know the multiplication tables. That’s the reason I did fifth grade twice. When my father found out, he was going to drill me. He’d say, “8 times 7.” Oh, my God. [all laugh] What sense I had to go out one year and did the other one. I’m still not sure what is 8 times 7.
CM: I have no idea. [laughs] Well, we all know you as G.D. Tell us, what does G.D. stand for?
GDS: Gervase Duan. Duan (“Doo-ahn”) is my middle name. “Jer-vays” is an English pronunciation, talking about England, and French it’s “jer-vay.” Italian, it’s “her-va-chi-o.” Gervase was an early martyr in the Roman Empire and became a saint. I don’t mean to say I wouldn’t claim to be a saint, myself. [laughs] But it does run in the family.
CM: You said that G.D. stood for something else, though? Now what was that?
GDS: Oh yes. I often, if I think I can get away with it, the nurses at the hospitals will ask me what the G.D. stands for. I’ll tell them quite seriously it’s, “gorgeous dude.”
CM: [laughs] I like that better. [laughs] We’re up to a Depression now. [metallic clink, possibly a bottle opening] You’re an attorney, aren’t you?
GDS: Yes, after the war.
CM: Were you in World War II?
GDS: Yes. I fought like a tiger, but they drafted me anyway. [CM laughs] No, I volunteered. I was an aviation cadet and I volunteered as an aviation cadet. I was working up in Kansas City, when the war came along, in a control tower for the federal government. I volunteered in 1942. They put me in reserve, and when they called me up I wanted to be a pilot. I had been a pilot at OU and the government had a – I know now and I knew it then that they were preparing for war with pilots and air crew.
CM: You see the movies now that were made back then and they were preparing the country for war.
GDS: Yes. Oh, yes. FDR was, very quietly. No one accused him of being a war hawk though he was. Actually, he wanted very much for his country to be - well, we’re getting into something I know nothing about except he had convictions. Finally they sat down, a critical job and wouldn’t call me up. They finally called me to active duty. They said, “Spradlin, we have enough air crew now either in the air or in training. You can’t be in that part. You’re a cadet. You volunteered, so you have a choice. You can be a communications cadet becoming communications officer, or you can be a private in the infantry. Well, I pondered on that I would say all of three seconds, and I said, “I’ll be a communications officer.” So I did. I was sent to war in China, and when I came back I went to law school at OU.
CM: Did you practice law?
GDS: Yes. I got a job as a lawyer in the legal department of the Phillips Petroleum Company, and I worked in the division office here in Oklahoma City under the supervision of the man in charge, a higher attorney. A man I greatly admire, and still do, although he’s gone the way of so many. Then because I could speak Spanish, Phillips sent me to South America to be head of their legal department in South America. That sounds, I suppose, grander than it actually was. There was only one person in the department, so if we had heads and tails it was all me. I finally hired a man, a Venezuelan attorney, so then there were two of us. I could speak Spanish, although I found out when I got there that I didn’t speak Spanish nearly as well as Phillips thought I did, or as well as I thought I did. I really had to crack down on it hard and think about it all the time. I can still speak Spanish. I don’t speak it well or fluently anymore, but guys come around and I can talk to them and I know what they’re talking about. If they come in talking about farming or something, I’m totally at sea. I don’t know
CM: Where did you learn Spanish? At OU?
GDS: I’ve told you my problems with math. I got to OU and I found out that math was a required course, some kind of math, in order to get a degree. However, you could take its place by taking 16 or 18 hours of a foreign language, which I did because I was afraid I couldn’t pass a math course. I knew I couldn’t pass a math course. I still graduated. That was undergraduate days, not in law school. They don’t care if you spoke anything except English.
[clinking and rattling, probably a glass of ice water]
CM: So, this was after the war when you were with Phillips?
GDS: Right.
CM: Okay. What happened next? I did not know you until the ‘50s when we both were in the Mummer’s Theatre. What happened between that period and the time of the Mummers?
GDS: Well, you see Clyde, when I went to South America there was no income tax. My salary was five times what I’d been making here. (Unintelligible) I suppose it’s hard to get a lawyer to go down there. Whatever the reason, it was. I was (unintelligible) with Nellie. She was frugal and so was I. I don’t mean to say we were miserly, but we saved a little steak. Then I did what I really wanted to, and that was come home, go into the oil business, and would I be too immodest to say and get rich? That’s what I wanted to do. The way I grew up, that was success. I know better now, but that’s the truth. In 1960, no it was 1950, I retired. I was 40 years old, and I was going to lead the life of the idle rich. In attempting to do so, Nellie and I got divorced. I went off to Florida, down to Miami. I bought a yacht. I had in mind something like Conrad’s Lord Jim. I would grit my teeth and go to pieces with some Native girl, some romantic figure like that. I did love the sea, but [laughs] I didn’t like doing nothing because I felt like nothing. I enrolled down there in Miami University and got a master's degree in history. I had in mind that I would go ahead and get a Ph.D. and I’d be a history professor because I really like history. Then I’d go ahead and get a ticket, a Ph.D. someplace and become a professor. I’d be the kindly professor who had these eager young students surrounding me. Nellie and I got married again – we married each other again. In other words we renewed the marriage, had two children, two daughters. That was my place to be, at home and taking care of my family. So went back. That’s when I got started because Nellie liked the Mummers. She liked plays, so I would go with her. That’s the first time I saw you working, too. And Janey.
CM: Jane Hall.
GDS: Huh?
CM: Jane Hall. For those listening.
GDS: Jane Hall Woods. It’s not Woods anymore.
CM: No. She uses Jane Hall now. That’s what she uses.
GDS: That was her name, all right. Jane Hall. Quite by total accident, and this is the truth, I got a job at the Mummers. You see, back then if you remember, the mummers had a children’s theater and it helped with income. It helped keep the business going. My younger daughter, Wendy, was taking lessons. They also taught.
CM: Jackie Owens was the teacher.
GDS: That’s true. In those days – you all may not remember but Clyde will – the Mummers had a wonderful public relations program for the whole metropolitan area. One feature of that was the annual Mummers tryouts. That is, anyone in the community who had a desire to tread the boards could go down there on the appointed evening and read something, whatever they gave you, in hopes of being chosen for a play. I knew that it was a PR thing, and nobody ever got chosen that way, but my little daughter wanted me to. I’m not going to tell my daughter that I’m a cynical old man. If she wants to go down there, fine. We’ll go. We went, and she was a little scared. I could tell that. But I found that she expected me to be a participant in this venture and not just a chauffer. I’m not going to show the white feather in front of my daughter, so I signed the card too. When they called me in, there was Tom Kroutil and Mac, Mac Sissim, who was the director for so many years. More than our director, he made that thing by his own will succeed. It was not little theater. It was a professional theater.
CM: Yes. It was the best theater that has ever been in this town. Ever.
GDS: Oh yes. Far and away.
Unknown female speaker: Where was it located?
CM: 1108 West Main in a warehouse, a converted warehouse.
GDS: In front and around. They had a dedicated group inspired by Mac Sissim that just made it into a really fine theater. Anyway, I went in, and I read. Tom was there, just as a witness, I think. Mac picked her up and then we went home and forgot about it. It was a week or so later Mac called me at home and offered me a part in their next production, which was one of Tennessee Williams’ plays, “Cat on a Hot Tin Roof.” My first thought was what would my friends say? [CM laughs] Spradlin, there, making a fool of himself as usual. I was flattered. Again, I had nothing else to do so I said yeah, sure. Years went by. One thing led to another, and I did two more.
CM: I was in “The Remarkable Mr. Pennypacker.”
GDS: That’s the last one I did.
CM: What was the other one? “Cat on a Hot Tin Roof,” “Mr. Pennypacker” …?
GDS: I’ve forgotten, I’m sorry to say. I don’t know. Since I retired in the movie scene, I had so many pictures I cannot remember them. I’ve even forgotten many of the scenes even though I was in them.
CM: Your mother did some plays. Lavora. She was in, “The Man Who Came to Dinner.” I was in that with her. Okay, go ahead. You did those plays.
GDS: After those, years skipped. After three plays as a Mummer, and I am sorry I’ve forgotten the middle play, I said, “I’m going to try in the big time.” That’s what I decided. It was either go to New York or Hollywood. I was, at that time, a theater snob. I thought the real art was in treading the boards. I think the art is, but the money is working for the camera. I know people who won’t like me saying this but it’s harder work. You don’t have the rehearsal time and all that. It’s harder.
CM: Or the audience response.
GDS: No, you don’t have that. Silence doesn’t tell you things. I went out to Hollywood. I knew if I went to New York, a man who was as old as I – I was 46 – who looked like I do and talked as I do would never work. If I go to Hollywood, I know I can work on “Gunsmoke,” which was a popular series at this time. A Western. They wouldn’t mind my Oklahoma accent. Needless to say, I never worked in that. I was so green, so dumb, so many times. I couldn’t get in to see a casting director. Somebody told me that’s how you got started. They didn’t tell me casting directors wouldn’t see me. I never did get seen. I had a little thing called a variety that once a week would have all the TV shows they were shooting and have the casting director as well as the producer on them. I was very well-prepped. I had my routes planned out and I would go to see these various people and I did not get to see one casting director. Usually I couldn’t even get in the gate if they were on the lot. Finally, one of the secretaries of a casting director said, “Mr. Spradlin, you’re going at this the wrong way. Here, you have to have an agent. The agent will set you up with a get-acquainted interview, and then the casting director may think you’ll be right for some part now, or next week, or three weeks from now. He’ll give you a call and then they’ll let you try out for the director and the producer.” I see. Well, I’ll get an agent. I looked in the phone book first. I didn’t know any agents. I looked in the phone book under the yellow pages and there was just a very few. One of them I’d heard of. I made a perfect fool of myself going. William Morris, went in to see them. I couldn’t get an agent. My lord. William Morris is in a big office building by itself. It’s still there in the same place. [clears throat] There’s a receptionist on the first floor, so I went up to her and introduced myself and I said, “I’d like to see Mr. Morris.” I noticed this strange expression came over her face [CM laughs], and she said, “Are you looking for representation, Mr. Spradlin?” Representation, that’s a good word. I said, “Yes ma’am. An agent.” She said, “We’re not taking on any actors right now. Do you have any film?” That’s kind of a code word out there for, “What’s your experience? What movies have you been in?” That’s what they’re asking. Have you ever worked in any film? I said, “No, ma’am but there’s a drugstore around the corner. I’ll buy it.” [CM and unknown female speaker laugh] I thought they gave you something like a screen test. Really, I did. They wouldn’t buy a roll of film for just anybody and waste it. She was kind. She said, “No, Mr. Spradlin. That’s not what I mean. I meant do you have experience in film itself. Not theater, film.” By that time, I knew I had made a ghastly error. [glass clinking and rattling] But I knew something else. I was a grown man and I know there’s a human element, always somewhere. I started looking not at that, but producers. One was named Hal Kanter. I thought a friend of mine had worked with him on the movies, had been to Hollywood, and worked for Hal Kanter. I remembered that name, so I called him. It was John D. Harrison.
CM: John D., yeah.
GDS: He died not long ago. I called John D. He said, “No, Hal Kanter soldiered with my brother in the war.” That’s all I needed. I called and introduced myself to John D.’s brother and said, “I don’t know Hal Kanter, but I would like to meet him because I want to interview for some part he is producing and directing at Chrysler Theater.” I think it was one show a week or so. I got an appointment then to see Hal Kanter. We talked awhile. I gave him the usual lot, my experience, and mostly what a vast success I was on the stage. Three plays. [laughs] He said, “If something comes up that I think you’re right for, I’ll let you read for it. Goodbye.” I thought he was a courteous and gentle man that said get the hell out and don’t come back. That’s what I thought he meant. Lo and behold, two weeks later his secretary called and wondered if I would be available to come in and read for a part. It happened that I was available. [CM laughs] I went in [clears throat] and I got a part that was nothing fabulous. Just one line, but it was enough for me to get into the Screen Actors’ Guild so at least I had that going for me. I could say I was in SAG. Did any of you here know Robert Emery, a lawyer here in town?
CM: No, but I know the name.
GDS: I called Bob because I thought he told me once that his sister had married somebody that worked for one of the networks. He thought in New York. I called and no, he worked for CBS in Hollywood and he was a big shot, a VP in production or something like that. Through that connection, I got an appointment with Buzz Blair, who by now years and years later is a very good friend of mine. He and his wife, Bob’s sister, and Francis and I see them for lunch from time to time. They live in Santa Barbara. It’s a place about halfway between (unintelligible). He called a man who is a producer of a serial out at Metro, the rounders, they called it. He called the producer of that and said he was going to send out a friend named G.D. Spradlin and ask him to consider me for some part. Of course, the guy is not only going to consider me. He’s going to give me a part. It may be a one-liner, but it’s going to get me a part because this big shot that okays the network, that’s their job. Nothing said. That’s just the way it works. I went out there and he did get me a one-liner for Chill Wills. Oh God, I was scared in those days. My hands would sweat. I didn’t know what to do with them. Once the director said, “Action!” it was kind of like my dad saying, “8 times 7!” [CM laughs] I just had to work through it. Finally, Vantic continued the thing with him, was the rounders. I worked on that until it was cancelled, which just lasted 13 weeks. I got to last seven or eight jobs, and Hal Kanter gave me another job. By that time, I had gotten maybe 10, 12, acting jobs on my own.
CM: You had some film. [laughs]
GDS: Then I could get an agent. It never hurt my feelings that an agent would deny me because I was a businessman too. All they have is time. That’s what they’re selling, is their time. How best to invest that, on a 46-year-old guy or maybe some 22-year-old boy or girl that’s maybe got a future? And to make money, of course. It didn’t bother me. I understood that. I would be the same way if I were they. They could then, after I had these here, say “This guy got work on his own. Maybe he’ll work.” I did get an agent and they put me in my first movie, Will Penny. It was a part. It was sure a part. I wasn’t out of the picture in the first reel, but it was a real part I could work. I was comfortable in it. I didn’t sweat so much and I wasn’t so frightened, though I never got over it completely. As a matter of fact, I never have looked on the Internet but there’s two or three or four places you get stuff about my credits. One guy here in the hospital said there was 17 jobs I had done out there. Can you imagine that? A raw bone field hand from Oklahoma doing that? It still surprises me. That’s it. Nellie died in ’99 and I was a bachelor for a while. Quite a while. I was living out there not doing much, not wanting to work anymore. It wasn’t that I didn’t have a good career. I loved it, but after a while I didn’t want to do it anymore.
CM: What about some of the people you worked with, like Brando?
GDS: Yeah. Now there’s a man with such superb skill and I don’t know how he does it. He doesn’t ever, I guess ever, he has his lines put up in little notes all over the set out of the reach of the camera. You look at him, you’re playing with him, and you see fear in his eyes, and you think, “A great, overwhelming actor like Brando and he hasn’t got it anymore.” And yet, I go to the same picture, the same scene, where I’m working it and I’m watching him instead of myself. With all the ego I have, he’s got something that makes you watch him. I don’t know what it is. I’ve really thought about it a lot. He’s a great, great, great actor.
CM: Who were some of the others you worked with?
GDS: First was Chuck Heston and I thought the best thing he’s ever done was Will Penny. A Western, last of the Westerns. And with, uh [pauses]. You know I even forget the names? Oh God. What was it?
CM: You did One on One.
GDS: Yeah. One on One with Robby Benson. That was a picture that Robby, as quite a young fellow, had written himself with his father’s help. I’ve forgotten who directed that, a former actor who’d gotten in an accident and crippled himself. Anyway, I loved doing that picture because he’s one of many, many directors who gave me freedom. Almost all of them did except two. I had two bad experiences like that, but I got that from Coppola, the first job I did with him, called Godfather Part II. He had so much power to make that because Godfather one was so successful that he actually had a few days of rehearsal. We would go in first and we would read. He would have actors just read the script. He had the reading on a Tuesday and then he would say on Wednesday, we had to make a speech. On Tuesday we would read and actually rehearse this part and rehearse that part. We got there and we finished quite early Tuesday and we went to Wednesday, and I wasn’t prepared at all. I didn’t know all those words. I knew the part and I knew that script, but I didn’t know word for word at all. I wasn’t going to tell him that, the director, so when I got called on [clears throat] I just went. I went up on the – you do it from a little stage thing they had. I stole some stuff from Senator Kerr. I told a joke that I had made up that had nothing whatsoever to do with that script. It kind of related to Utah. No, not Utah. I guess it was [pauses].
CM: Wyoming?
Unknown voice in background: Nevada?
GDS: Nevada, that’s it. [unknown male speaking faintly in the background] It related to Nevada because it, well, you don’t want to hear the joke. I just made it up. It started out with that, and then I talked about what a great thing Michael Coreleone had done. I pronounced it deliberately, “Core-lee-own.” [CM laughs] I was looking forward to doing it, a scene next, when it was “Core-lee-own-ay,” just to dig him. Can you imagine? I played the bad guy in the Mafia with the good guys. Anyway, we were walking [clears throat] back after wrapping that afternoon and he said, “G.D., I like that stuff you were doing up there on that scene.” He said, “listen, when you’re doing things, don’t worry about word-to-word in the script at all. I see you were making that you and not you making a senator. I like that. Don’t worry that I wrote the script and it’s going to offend me. [clears throat] You do the stuff. I like it better.” I said, “We can always do it over. That’s the beauty of that.” Do you see the kind of courage that would give a frightened Oklahoman? If they don’t like it, they can fire me. That’s easy for an actor to say because after you’ve done about two or three scenes, it costs too much to fire you. [laughs] Anyway, it did give me the courage to do that, and I did it from then on. From then on, I did that, and I did that in One on One that you mentioned, and everyone. I’d give a speech I know. I’d quote from Lincoln or Shakespeare and it had nothing – well, it had something to do with the part but not with the script. That stuff I loved to do. I loved some of Lincoln’s words in his first inaugural. People usually quote from the second. When he said, “My friends of the South, you must not leave. You must not leave this Union of ours.” It’s kind of lawyerly talk at first, pretty though, but was Lincoln in the last two paragraphs that are just heart-rending to me. So, I quoted that, and I thought it fit in. Francis left it in, so I guess it did. All sorts of things like that. I’m rambling along about stuff, I think, of little interest to you.
CM: Did you find, in making film, which is not done in sequence, how did you manage? I have always felt that I would not be good on film because of that very thing. A scene would be done at the last part of the film the first day of shooting.
GDS: Yes, it very well could be. I’ll tell you the way I did it, and that’s the only way I know because I suppose one actor does it different from another. I studied that script, but not the words. I’m not interested in the words for a long, long time. Well, not interested in some but I don’t want to learn them. I’m not thinking about learning the words. I’m thinking about how I feel and wondering why they’re saying what they’re saying. If that was happening to me, what would I do? How would I feel? That kind of thing. Then scene by scene, overall, it just comes to you. It doesn’t matter that it’s done out of sequence. Really, it doesn’t. If you’ve worked on it enough you have a little dream, is what you do. You hold that script, and you dream about it. You know what I mean, don’t you?
CM: Yeah.
Unknown male speaker: I think that’s – if I could jump in? One of my favorite scenes that you did was in Apocalypse Now when you assigned Martin Sheen the–
CM: To go up the river to kill Brando.
Unknown male speaker: Just the way that, of course you were a playing a general, but you just seemed so natural in that role. It seemed like it could be Sunday dinner in Oklahoma because it was centered around that table, and you worked in those philosophy – I don’t remember the exact words, but you were – was that another time when you were still bringing in your own words?
GDS: Yes. Exactly. It was hot as hell inside that trailer we were working in, but I didn’t think about that.
Unknown male speaker: Was that in the Philippines?
GDS: Yes. We were shooting in the Philippines out in the boondocks. A lot of times if you were working around there you’ll have [clears throat] a big electric generator and cooling air but this didn’t have that up there. I know what you’re talking about and it was stealing a line or two from Lincoln in his first inaugural. He said that they couldn’t leave. He said he felt that, “the mystic chords of memory stretching from every patriot grave, every heart and hearthstone all over this broad land will once again swell the chorus of Union when they embark, as surely they will be, by the better angels of our nature.” Aren’t those beautiful? They’re magnificent words. They were effective and... Three had already pulled out of the Union at that time. Oh, they came from a man’s heart, and I shared those. That scene. We were talking about how you dream; you know? I’m here as this general with four stars on his shoulder and he’s having to send a captain up the river to kill a colonel, and the son of a man he was in the war with. That wasn’t in the script, of course. That’s part of the dream. You hate to do it. You hate what you’re doing but you have to. He’s gone wild up there and he’s making policy for the United States, and he knows he shouldn’t do that. What do you do? Kill him. (unintelligible)
CM: You played a senator, but you also were in politics yourself for a bit, weren’t you?
GDS: I ran for mayor of Oklahoma City in 1960. I ran a poor second in a field of four, and the voters of Oklahoma City in their wisdom said a political career was not to be mine.
CM: How fortunate for you.
GDS: I would have been a one-term mayor or congressman or whatever. I was not doing what you have to do to raise that money.
CM: What was your last film, your last picture?
GDS: The last one was shot up in Canada. [glass clinking] Let’s see. What was that? Oh, it was a comedy. Canadian Bacon, made of all people by Michael Moore.
CM: Really?
GDS: Yes. He was not acting like an idiot in those days. He wasn’t much of a director, I have to say. He’d just kind of sit there. He’d let me do whatever I wanted to do and that was fine. It had a good script. It was a comedy, and I didn’t have any funny lines. After “The Remarkable Mr. Pennypacker,” I wanted to play comedies so much.
CM: It’s more fun.
GDS: Just to hear that laughter coming. That’s a great thing.
CM: After you made Canadian Bacon, did you decide then that you would hang it up and come back to Oklahoma? What happened?
GDS: I just didn’t do anything. I did some shameful things. I didn’t tell my agents I wanted to quit. Wouldn’t do any good. I even wanted to before Nellie died. She was ill for a long period, a good part of a year, before she died. I don’t know. I just didn’t want to anymore, but Nellie wanted me to. She loved those free trips to Spain and Italy and England [laughs] and she thought it was good for me. Right or wrong, that’s what she thought. I wanted to before then. Of course, all the time she was sick I didn’t. I wouldn’t. She wanted me there with her and that was fine. It was okay. After she died, I didn’t really have an excuse to tell my agents or that kind of thing. I know an actor named – oh, what was his name? He worked in Bull Durahm. That was the first thing I saw him in. One of Hollywood’s great Democrats.
Unknown male speaker: Is it Tim Robbins?
GDS: Yeah. He made one about legal execution, capital punishment. I was for that but I didn’t want to work anyway. I wouldn’t tell my agents. I made some excuse for not coming down and talking to him about it. Finally, they gave up and quit. I didn’t do them right. I should have told them before they did a bunch of work on it. Even after that, I got one just the other day, a script from them. They hadn’t pushed it. It had just come in from some producer. I don’t want to anymore. I won’t. I felt kind of like Garbo. She said she was “tired of making faces.”
CM: Now you live both in Oklahoma and in California.
GDS: I do now because I have family. Nellie and I have five grandsons and no granddaughters. I married Francis and I do have two granddaughters, but my God I’ve got six, seven more grandsons! All hairy-legged boys. I wanted a granddaughter so much but didn’t get one. What did I do? I just didn’t do anything. I just stayed there on the ranch, planted trees, and planned the few things I would do. I quit chasing cattle around and made a deal with the neighbor there. I’d let him run his cattle on the grass. He’d been doing the farm work. I wasn’t going to do any more of that ever. [both laugh] I worked with the cattle there quite a bit. [metallic rattling] I would read. I read a lot. That’s about it. Then, usually I’d find an excuse to come home. [clears throat] I’d known Francis since 1948.
CM: Francis is your wife.
GDS: Francis is my wife. I met her in 1948. She was the wife of one of my best friends, Cal Hendrickson. We, as two families, were great, great, good friends. We would go on picnics together. We would go on vacations together. Every year just before Mardi Gras, we would go down to New Orleans together. About three days is all I can really take. Great food, and then drinking like a crazy man for three days and this peasant scum would get out. [laughs] It was great. Our kids grew up together and her kids were like mine. She had three boys and one girl. My kids – Francis was like a godmother or surrogate mother to them. The weird thing is Cal after a long illness died just a few weeks after Nellie did. In fact, I came back and said a few words at his memorial service. He was truly one of my best friends, one of two or maybe three at most, the kind of friend that’s a friend for life. The one you can be completely open with or tell your deepest secrets to, or vice versa. You don’t see each other for two years and it’s as if you saw each other yesterday morning. That kind of thing. Cal was one of them. He died just a few weeks after that. I saw all the kids again and Francis. I went back home, and I’d sent Francis some flowers. Not for Cal, not that kind of thing, just to Francis with one word, “courage,” after Cal died.
CM: So here we are –
GDS: That was it. I was surprised the time went by. It was some weeks or so that Francis wrote a thank you note for the flowers. Whoa. [laughs] I thought about it, so I wrote back, and I’d never replied to a thank you note before. What do you say? Thanks for the thank you note? But no, I asked her if it would be alright to have a correspondence, drop a line from time to time. In due time, she wrote back and said sure. I found more excuses to come home then and I started wooing Francis. Might as well be straight about it. After the courtship seemed to me an awful long time, I’d say, “Francis, let’s get married.” She’d say, “We’ll see.” What in the world does that mean? It doesn’t mean yes, and it doesn’t mean no. “We’ll see.” [both laugh] What’re we going to see? One day she didn’t say, “we’ll see” anymore, so we got married and lived happily ever after. I’ll say this for Francis. I got to say it seriously and honestly. She has turned the winter of my life into glorious summer.
CM: Wonderful. That’s wonderful.
GDS: Yep. [metallic clank] She’s quite a girl.
CM: I think that we’re up now practically to the present time. April 16, 2007. What a wonderful life. You should do your own version on stage of It’s a Wonderful Life. [both laugh] A one man show. I think there would be an audience for it, as there will be for this afternoon that we’ve been spending. That’s probably about as far as we can go, so thank you G.D. It’s been wonderful [metallic rattling] being here with you and hearing your history.
GDS: I’ve been looking forward to getting with you for lunch again, but hell, I’m in the hospital all the time. We’ve got to soon, Clyde, and we’ve got to get Janey. Maybe we can get Francis sometime.
CM: Yes.
GDS: You can’t tell. We might talk about acting stuff.
CM: Well, we just might get you back on the stage. If you’re not going to make movies anymore, you might still be on the stage. [laughs]
GDS: No more.
Unknown female speaker: Thank you.
End of interview.